To-Day

I woke this morning out of dreams into what we call Reality, into the daylight, the furniture of my familiar bedroom--in fact into the well-known, often-discussed, but, to my mind, as yet unexplained Universe.

Then I, who came out of Eternity and seem to be on my way thither, got up and spent the day as I usually spend it. I read, I pottered, I talked, and took exercise; and I sat punctually down to eat the cooked meals that appeared at stated intervals.

But this is just where what is called ‘the rub’ comes in. It would, for a month or two, look so peculiar a word that it might require something like a coup d’état to introduce it. And yet the schools of music in London could work the miracle without difficulty or delay.

Swine. Americans still use the word pig in its original sense of the young of the hog and sow; though they will say chickens for poultry. In England we talk of pigs and chickens when we mean swine and poultry. Chaucer has

His swyn his hors his stoor and his pultreye.

The verb to pig has kept to its meaning, though it has developed another: the substantive probably got loose through its generic employment in composite words, e.g. guinea-pig, sea-pig, &c.; and having acquired a generic use cannot lose it again. But it might perhaps be worth while to distinguish strictly between the generic and the special use of the word pig, and not call a sow a pig, nor a hen a chicken. So hog and sow might still have their pigs and be all of them swine.

Swift. Perhaps it is going too far to say that ‘swift’ is colloquial only in metaphorical applications, we might speak of ‘a swift bowler’ without exciting surprise; but it is expedient to restore this word to general use, and avoid the use of fast for denotation of speed. ‘To stand fast’ is very well, but ‘to run fast’ is thoroughly objectionable. Such a use destroys the sense of firmness which the word is needed and well qualified to denote.